The sound
The sound is the wordless, collective cry raised by thirty neighborhood women outside 124 Bluestone Road in the climactic exorcism scene of Toni Morrison's Beloved. It is the sound that breaks the back of words, a wave of communal voice that both summons Sethe out of her consuming bond with Beloved and precipitates the novel's final crisis, in which Sethe attacks Edward Bodwin with an ice pick. The sound represents the community's reclamation of Sethe and the triumph of collective witnessing over individual trauma.
Origins and the Women's Assembly
The sound arises from a specific social and spiritual crisis. By the spring of 1874, 124 has become a site of starvation and psychological collapse. Sethe, consumed by her devotion to Beloved, has lost her job at Sawyer's Restaurant and spends her days playing with Beloved, dressing in bright carnival clothes, and designing gardens in dirt too hard to chop. The thirty-eight dollars of life savings are spent on fancy food and ribbons. Denver, the only one who retains a grip on reality, watches her mother diminish as Beloved grows plumper and more demanding. The relationship deteriorates into furious arguments, with Beloved accusing Sethe of leaving her behind and Sethe pleading for forgiveness, counting her reasons and listing her suffering. When Denver finally steps off the edge of the world to seek help, she first goes to Lady Jones, who gives her rice, eggs, and tea, and then to the Bodwins, where Janey Wagon spreads the news among the colored women of Cincinnati that Sethe's dead daughter has come back to fix her. The story is blown up and agitated until the women, led by Ella, decide that rescue is in order. Ella, a practical woman who believes there is a root to chew or avoid for every ailment, is infuriated by the idea of past errors taking possession of the present. She does not mind a little communication between the two worlds, but this is an invasion. So thirty women make up a company and walk slowly, slowly toward 124 on a Friday so wet and hot that Cincinnati's stench has traveled to the country.
The Sound Itself
When the women arrive at 124, the first thing they see is not Denver sitting on the steps, but themselves—younger, stronger, even as little girls lying in the grass asleep. They see themselves scooping German potato salad onto plates, teasing the men, hoisting children on their hips, and Baby Suggs laughing and skipping among them. This vision of their own past, of the joy of Baby Suggs' yard, grounds them. Denver hears mumbling and looks to the left. She stands when she sees them. They group, murmuring and whispering, but do not step foot in the yard. A woman drops to her knees, and half of the others do likewise. Denver sees lowered heads but cannot hear the lead prayer—only the earnest syllables of agreement that back it: Yes, yes, yes, oh yes. Among those not on their knees, who stand holding 124 in a fixed glare, is Ella, trying to see through the walls, behind the door, to what is really in there. Ella has been beaten every way but down. She remembers the bottom teeth she lost to the brake and the scars from the bell that are thick as rope around her waist. She had delivered, but would not nurse, a hairy white thing fathered by "the lowest yet." It lived five days never making a sound. The idea of that pup coming back to whip her too sets her jaw working, and then Ella hollers. Instantly the kneelers and the standers join her. They stop praying and take a step back to the beginning. In the beginning there were no words. In the beginning was the sound, and they all knew what that sound sounded like.
The Effect on Sethe and Beloved
Inside 124, Sethe is breaking a lump of ice into chunks when the music enters the window. She is wringing a cool cloth to put on Beloved's forehead, who is sprawled on the bed in the keeping room, sweating profusely, a salt rock in her hand. Both women hear it at the same time and both lift their heads. As the voices grow louder, Beloved sits up, licks the salt, and goes into the bigger room. Sethe and she exchange glances and start toward the window. They see Denver sitting on the steps and beyond her, where the yard meets the road, the rapt faces of thirty neighborhood women. Sethe opens the door and reaches for Beloved's hand. Together they stand in the doorway. For Sethe it is as though the Clearing has come to her with all its heat and simmering leaves, where the voices of women search for the right combination, the key, the code, the sound that broke the back of words. Building voice upon voice until they find it, and when they do it is a wave of sound wide enough to sound deep water and knock the pods off chestnut trees. It breaks over Sethe and she trembles like the baptized in its wash. The singing women recognize Sethe at once and surprise themselves by their absence of fear when they see what stands next to her. The devil-child is clever, they think, and beautiful. It has taken the shape of a pregnant woman, naked and smiling in the heat of the afternoon sun. Thunderblack and glistening, she stands on long straight legs, her belly big and tight. Vines of hair twist all over her head. Her smile is dazzling.
The Crisis and Its Aftermath
The sound does not merely summon Sethe; it also precipitates the novel's final act of violence. Sethe feels her eyes burn and looks up at the sky, which is blue and clear. When she lowers her eyes to look again at the loving faces before her, she sees him—Edward Bodwin, guiding the mare, slowing down, his black hat wide-brimmed enough to hide his face but not his purpose. He is coming into her yard and he is coming for her best thing. She hears wings. Little hummingbirds stick needle beaks right through her headcloth into her hair and beat their wings. And if she thinks anything, it is no. No no. Nonono. She flies. The ice pick is not in her hand; it is her hand. Standing alone on the porch, Beloved is smiling, but now her hand is empty. Sethe is running away from her, running, and she feels the emptiness in the hand Sethe has been holding. Now she is running into the faces of the people out there, joining them and leaving Beloved behind. Alone. Again. Then Denver, running too, away from her to the pile of people out there. They make a hill. A hill of black people, falling. And above them all, rising from his place with a whip in his hand, the man without skin, looking. He is looking at her. The women grab Sethe and Ella puts her fist in her jaw, stopping the attack before it can kill. When they get Sethe down on the ground and the ice pick out of her hands and look back to the house, Beloved is gone. The sound, which began as a prayer and became a wordless cry, has broken the back of words and, in doing so, has broken the spell that held Sethe and Beloved together. It is the community's collective voice that finally saves Sethe, not by speaking to her, but by speaking for her, and by speaking in a register that predates language itself.
